WD Se 4TB Enterprise Hard Drive Review

With its “Se” series of enterprise hard drives, WD is targeting those in need of “bulk storage”, whether it be in a datacenter or NAS. Its biggest perk is that it almost perfectly mimics the company’s Re drives, boasting a 5-year warranty, models ranging from 2 – 4TB, and best of all, a price tag of up to $80 less.

Real-World: Transfers & Game Level Loading

One of the most common tasks that someone will tackle with a storage device is transferring data, so to see what our collection of drives are capable of, we take a collection of solid files and folders and transfer them from our super-fast SATA 6Gbit/s SSD to each hard drive. Then for good measure, we copy a file and folder on the same drive. Both our files and folders come in 4GB and 16GB sizes, with the folders holding between ~5,000 (4GB) and ~20,000 (16GB) files.

Our stopwatch starts as soon as we click the “Copy here” button in the context menu, and stops as soon as the transfer dialog disappears.

When transferring solid files (or copying folders on the same drive), the Se performs on par with the Re, but with folders, Re’s extra tuning puts it definitively into the lead – it basically halved the time of our 16GB folder transfer.

Game Level Loading

One of the biggest benefits of faster storage is quicker load times for games, both with regards to their startup and level-loading. For testing here, we use two of the heaviest games we have on hand; Sid Meier’s Civilization V and Total War: SHOGUN 2. Our test here is simple: we see how long it takes each game to load. Our stopwatch starts as soon as we click the option to load either game..

Interestingly, this is one test where the Se falls to the back of the pack, situating itself just ahead of the Green 2TB in the SHOGUN 2 test. With Civilization V, its result places it near the middle, ahead of the 2TB Red.

I’ve now switched entirely to the WD Re disks for _all_ of my storage needs..they really are built insanely well, not to mention they have much better heat dissipation than the equivalent consumer drive (this is especially true for the 250GB and 500GB units!). The Se is just as compelling.

http://techgage.com/ Rob Williams

I agree. It sucks to cough up the extra $$$ for the drives, but they’re built for long life and constant use.